Few things have had a greater impact on the built environment than the internal combustion engine. In the past century, old cities were reconfigured according to its needs while new ones were built around it. Now, with the advent of connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), we are set to enter a new phase of urbanisation – one that could spell the end to gridlocked town centres, soulless strip malls and arguments over who was first to spot a vacant car-parking space.
By promising to radically alter day-to-day living, the driverless car revolution can also provide useful pointers for how businesses should navigate the kind of blue-skies future-gazing that has become so prevalent in our tech-obsessed world.
Actual predictions vary. PwC estimates 40% of the mileage driven could be done in autonomous vehicles in 2030. How automated they will be then is hard to say, but their transformation provides an opportunity to reimagine and repurpose the space they operate in, potentially inspiring a renaissance in urban and suburban design.
“There is enormous opportunity now in how we rethink the city – or, more accurately, how we want vehicles to use the city,” says Kinder Baumgardner, president at international landscape architecture, planning and urban design firm SWA. “However, it’s important to plan and make policy before it’s too late. New cities and antique cities are very different propositions. Houston and London have very different infrastructures.”
Currently, it’s estimated that most vehicles are inactive for about 95% of the time. In built-up areas they are parked on the roadside or left in large car parks. The RAC estimates there are between 17,000 and 20,000 non-residential car parks in Great Britain providing between 3m and 4m spaces.
By contrast, CAVs will no longer have to remain at their destination. They could drop passengers, move on, pick up new ones and eventually park on the periphery in stacked spaces when not needed. Meanwhile, fleets managed by lift-sharing companies could further bridge private car ownership and public transport. These trends would likely free up road space and render large car parks in town centres increasingly unnecessary.
There are signs this is already happening: Amsterdam recently announced planning to eliminate 11,000 parking spaces by 2025 – they’ll be replaced by trees, bike parking, and wider pavements.
“A huge amount of infrastructure dedicated to parking could be freed up for new development,” says Baumgardner. “In antique cities, such as New York and London, where housing is at a premium, those spaces could be converted to homes or offices. Some architects argue you can’t make a class A apartment out of a garage, but they used to say that about old industrial buildings. People who are creative with these spaces will reap the benefits. And if you can’t make money out of it from housing then freed-up space could be converted into parks.”
Tom Cohen at the Centre for Transport Studies, University College London, agrees: “Garages could be superfluous to electric cars. Reusing central space is a very attractive thought, but that will have to mean fewer vehicles all round.”
Of course, if autonomous vehicle use is made cheaper and more convenient, there is always the possibility that traffic will actually increase, thanks to greater demand. The hope is that their connectedness will mitigate for that. For example, improved algorithms might mean that cars could travel closer together and avoid bottlenecks by sharing information. The data they generate could allow congestion charging at peak times to control journeys and raise revenue lost from parking.
In the city of Wuxi, China, Audi is working with local government to smooth traffic flow by using data to help cars adjust their speed to catch more green lights. The system, called Audi Traffic Light Information (TLI), uses data shared between cars and traffic management infrastructure.
Other possibilities include CAVs being allowed to travel much faster on designated routes, which would mean commuting distances could increase. Another potential avenue is to step up the segregation of space. “If you look at Hong Kong, you have a city where pedestrians and vehicles are already separated to some extent,” says Baumgardner. “People use skyways, vehicles have unrestricted road space, almost the way you could imagine an autonomous city operating in the future if you scale it up.”
Amid all the utopian visions of the future, however, Cohen sounds a note of caution. He is currently working on a two-year project titled Driverless Futures? funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. “We need to govern the emergence of this technology in a positive and constructive way before it’s too late,” he says. “Currently policy is being led by innovation, but that needs careful analysis to ensure its practical application is not overlooked.”
Many businesses approach technological change by trying to balance the competing impulses of open-minded enthusiasm and soberly considered scepticism. But the advent of driverless cars shows us that, when we think through the wide-ranging ramifications of technology fully enough, enthusiasm and careful consideration can be the same thing.
